Disbelief
by Mighty-and-Powerful-Gods
Summary: He's not imaginary. He can't be, right?


I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. I'm really not.

That's what I keep telling myself as my mind spins whirlwinds in and out of disbelief.

Picture books of fairy tales and winter sprites lay open and scattered on my floor. Green eyes wide and searching. This is insane…

Have you ever felt like there's a lost memory, hidden somewhere within the deepest recesses of yourself? So desperate to find it, to grasp it and feel it with your bare hands? But just as your outstretched fingers skim the surface, the thought recoils escapes your grasp.

Sometimes I feel I've been looking for so long I forget what I'm searching for, and I wonder if there's anything to find. But sometimes there's an exact image, and I know precisely what I'm seeking.

Belief is a funny thing. I've read historys upon historys of people destroying one another in the name of a belief. Thing is, belief is such an indefinite thing, so abstract and vague. There is no right answer in beliefs. That's when I have no idea if anything is true or not. If he…

When I was a little girl, I read stories about a guardian of the frost. He brought joy with the season. I remember looking out my window that night and watching the snow fall. I watched the powder build up until it left a sea of white on the ground. Tree branches were crystallized with icy frost. Kaleidoscopic patterns of ice crawled up my windows. I looked at all of this beauty, blooming around me, and I thought something this beautiful has to be magic.

I've had dreams so tangible I sometimes wonder if they're really memories. Dreams of a boy with piercing blue eyes and snowy white hair. He carried an ice-encrusted staff, and he would touch the tip to my bedroom floor and intricate veins of frost would bloom out across the stone. It had to have been a dream. Boys don't fly into bedrooms carrying magical ice staffs. My mother has taught me enough to know reality from dreaming. But still… I never remembered any of my dreams as a little girl… But the dream about the boy with the staff… That dream has stayed with me even years later.

"Rapunzel, focus!" Mother's voice sharp and shrill snaps my spine straight as a ten year old me tries to learn vocabulary. Mother draws the curtains on the window that I can't take my eyes off of, because moments ago I swore I saw electric blue eyes, coming out of my storybooks like a dream… I told Mother my dream once. "It was just a dream, Rapunzel. He's not real." Real or not real? I have heard that phrase too many times growing up as my mother tries to pull my drowning head from books of princesses and spells and evil witches. She hid any books on legends that I once had. "I'm tired of hearing about these fictional characters," she said with a huff, throwing a book in the box on every word. The box was kept in her closet, which she locked with a key.

Thirteen years old. Mother comes home to find my face sticking out an open window, frost-bitten fingertips, exclaiming "he's real, he's real!" I'd found the key in her drawer, and pages of winter sprites decorated the floor. She asks me who I'm talking to, and I tell her…and I tell her… The name is a blank space and I'm dying to fill it in, aching to find that spark of a memory, but nothing is coming. She hears the name and the frustrated eyerolls I've received so many times in the past are now replaced with a look of tired concern. She kneels to the floor and rubs my back. "Dear… you're delusional. That person does not exist." I protest and try to show her the boy sitting on my window sill. "There's no one there, dearest." Another phrase that was repeated for what would be years of self-questioning sanity.

For my sixteenth birthday, I asked my mother for more paint. Specifically white paint. She asked me why and when she saw the paintings covering my bedroom walls my chest constricted at the falling in her face. I did not want to be responsible for my mother's exhaustion. Yet here she was, falling slowly trying to house and tend to her schizophrenic daughter. And there I was, ashamed of that tiny fire that lit me from the inside with every stroke of my paintbrush. I had dreamed of a boy with white hair and blue eyes, desperation in his voice, "remember me." I had asked for more paint for my birthday. Mother kept it locked with the storybooks. "It's feeding your delusions, dear." The conviction in her voice shrunk me to the size of an ant. The word "delusion" became a household term.

And now here I am, eighteen years old, and I'm still sick.

"You are not sick."

A disembodied voice speaks from an open space in the room, and the familiarity tugs at my heartstrings in a painfully desperate way.

Eyes squeezed shut. I tell myself to come to reality. Remember the steps Mother told you when you saw him.

"Please… you have to see me…"

Step one: Acknowledge the delusion is not reality.

"You're not real… You're not real…"

"I am real, Rapunzel! I promise! Don't you remember?"

Step two: count to ten.

I count out loud because it makes breathing easier.

"One…two…three…"

"Please, Rapunzel, please just try and remember!"

"Four…five…"

"Remember the snowball fights and the hot chocolate and the paintings and the ice skating…"

"Six…seven…eight…"

"My name! Just remember my name, Rapunzel! Come on, don't you know my name?"

"Nine…"

A flash of blue and white appears in the corner. I snap my gaze to the spot and for a moment I think I see him.

I'm too terrified to finish counting because my delusions are getting bad again. Like they were before Mother stepped in…

But what was even more terrifying…Did I want to forget?

In a flash just as quick, the figure is gone.

Step three: Reason out the delusion.

I look at the empty spot, but I know he's still standing there. Ignore the patch of ice left where he was standing.

"You're just a delusion…none of this is reality."

"Rapunzel, look at me."

I feel his face inches from mine. Feel his cool breath tickle my skin. A flash of blue eyes staring intently into my green ones.

"Stop it! You're not real…"

"I am Rapunzel, I really am!" A cold sensation fades in and out of my shoulders. He's trying to shake me to reality. No, wait. This is reality. He is a figment. Nobody is shaking you, Rapunzel.

"You're…you're…"

"Please…" He's ghostly now. Features specific and defined, but fading in and out with a flicker of light. Cautiously, my hand inches closer to his figure. "Please, try and remember…"

My heart is pounding. My hands are shaking as my fingertips edge closer and closer to the empty space. I know he is there.

I feel a coldness surround my body. Little drops of cold melting onto my skin. I realize it's been snowing in my bedroom.

It's…it's been snowing in my bedroom. Tangible, physical snow. In April.

My breath hitches as my hand stops moving.

The name. It's on the tip of my tongue, banging against my mouth, trying desperately to escape my lips…

So many years of insanity. What was this, then? Had I slipped so far into my own mind that even the snow that soaked my skin was nothing but imagination?

Memories of a white-haired boy with a magical stick come come seeping into my mind. Memories… Not dreams, but memories…

I feel cool fingertips touch my own, until our hands meet, palm to palm. Finally the vision solidifies, and all I see are the bright blue eyes of the winter guardian that visited my window all those years ago.

And finally I have a name for him.

"Jack Frost."


End file.
